Seems logical thing to do, everybody knows the stock won't be on this level forever. Just leaves the question, would they think the company has a future that will only consist of a rise in business, or is this rest of the market catching up on the gap between them and google? I think the founders know the gap will most likely get smaller instead of bigger, so I would sell them too I were one of the founders...I wish I was :>

they're even smarter than I thought. Nice to know you're still a billionaire no matter what happens. Actually, after all the shares become eligible to sell, other G employees will start selling too so they're lucky if they end up with $400 mil each. My heart goes out to them :)

That sure didn't take long. I guess they recoignize a peak price when they see it. Only they know for sure there are no serious innovations coming out in the next few years, and within 12 months they are going to have Microsoft breathing down their neck... wise move but greedy move...

Not greedy at all, just normal post-IPO behavior. It's been a very common strategy for many who buy into stock pre-IPO, even before the whole dot-com scene, to know in advance that they'll be selling off a certain amount post-IPO.

So they are effectively dumping 16.6 million shares. Original IPO was 19,605,052 shares. Unless there is a lot of pent up demand for G shares, nearly doubling the number of outstanding shares ought to kock down the share price a lot.

If the share price & market cap were to drop by 40%, would that have index funds selling the stock right away or do they take a while to rebalance?

Wasn't there something special about the owners shares? I vaguely remember reading that although Google went public, the voting classes of the IPO offered shares ensured that the original founders & investors retained voting control? So will these shares be a different class to the IPO shares - or do they revert to a different class?

This is barely news ; it is simply a part of the normal process of bringing a company to the Market and part of the reason why a company IS brought to the market to finally get the big payday they have worked for these past 10 years.

The stock price will be very volatile (even without any major news)at least over the next year as it settles in.

You will see stock players that are shorting the stock yelling "fire" trying to influence the stock price down and then after they profit at that end the next you here they'll being pushing the hype and working the long position.

If you are not daytrading but purely long then simply figure out what you feel is the best PE that google should be trading at and dont buy until then .

Insider selling at this point is ONLY a signal of them finally taking the big payday and rarely signals anything important at a company.

"but if they know that their system is broking and they know that their company will crash and burn, wouldn't selling out quickly before that be inside trading? "

I dont; think they know or think that the system is broken? One man's broken system is another man's $40 billion company. Insider trading is very different and they'll probably soon announce the exact date of sale (let's say June 14th, 2005) to sell the stock no matter what price. This way there's no insider trading questions.

I guarantee that if you walk into any qualified financial advisor's office and state that 99% of your assets are in a single stock, you'll be told to sell shares and diversify. That advice isn't dependent on the quality of the stock or its possible prospects; it's just bad practice to not diversify your assets, whether you are a billionaire or not. I didn't check insider records, but I'm sure over the years Bill G has sold off many chunks of MSFT to fund other investments and philanthropy.

In a separate filing, John Doerr, a board member of Google and a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, to report the sale of 5.78 million class A common shares at $172.54. Doerr filed on behalf of Kleiner Perkins. The shares are worth $997 million.

Kleiner Perkins bought in at $.49 per share. I guess that will cover a few losers :)